Biosecurity Frontiers

Overview

Biosecurity Frontiers is a UK Defence Innovation themed competition run by the Cabinet Office on behalf of the UK government. The competition is designed to support innovative proposals that help deliver the ambitions of the 2023 UK Biological Security Strategy and the 2025 National Security Strategy.

The aim is to strengthen the UK’s resilience against biological risks, whether they arise naturally, through accidental release or through deliberate biological attack. These risks may affect humans, animals, plants or the wider environment.

The competition is focused on technologies that can help the UK understand, detect, prevent and respond to biological threats. It is particularly relevant for innovators working in biosurveillance, diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, AI, engineering biology, protective systems and technologies that can support frontline users across public health, defence, security and wider government contexts.

This competition is split into three challenges:

Challenge 1: Biodetection and Biosurveillance

Challenge 2: AI and Diagnostics, Therapeutics and Vaccines

Challenge 3: Non-pharmaceutical Protective Systems

Scope

The government is seeking proposals against the following areas:

Biodetection and Biosurveillance

AI and Diagnostics, Therapeutics and Vaccines

Develop non-pharmaceutical protective systems

The intention is to fund innovative solutions that have the capacity or potential to be used on the frontline of managing biosecurity risks. Through this competition, industry and academia can demonstrate the feasibility or practicality of their solution, while meeting the minimum standard of compliance with domestic regulations.

Key themes and topics

Challenge 1: Next Generation Biodetection and Biosurveillance

The government is seeking to strengthen biosurveillance capabilities to detect and monitor traditional and novel threats that are naturally derived or manmade. Capabilities include:

• Sensitive or low-latency detection of novel outbreaks within communities or particular locations, including technologies deployable outside of the laboratory and potentially in harsh environments
• Technologies that monitor outbreaks as well as initially detect them
• Bioforensics and attribution technologies that help understand the characteristics or origin of a threat

Ideas that could help solve this challenge area include, but are not limited to:

• New environmental surveillance technologies, focused on building capability in the use of portable in-field surveillance technologies and supporting the interpretation of complex surveillance data
• Computational tools capable of analysing large datasets, including relevant omic datasets, that could aid the identification of notifiable pathogens, emerging pathogens, synthetically derived pathogens and genetic anomalies within complex datasets
• Computational tools that enable rapid analysis and fusion of disparate and large or complex datasets, for example approaches to interrogate microbial sequencing data, data from non-genomic outputs and sample metadata
• Cutting-edge sequencing technology, DNA air sequencing and early-stage work to identify future sequencing techniques
• Permanently installed air surveillance systems at high-footfall, private and publicly accessible locations that detect, identify, monitor and quantify biological agents in the aerosol phase

Proposals must address at least one challenge and move technologies through Technology Readiness Levels. Innovations must progress up to a minimum of TRL 4 and a maximum of TRL 6, progressing through at least one TRL during the project.

Challenge 2: AI and Diagnostics, Therapeutics and Vaccines

The government is seeking industry support in harnessing AI to support the identification and development of new diagnostic, therapeutic and vaccine candidates. This is likely to focus on priority pathogens identified by the UK Health Security Agency and novel biological threats, as well as the use of predictive AI for structure-based diagnostics and DTV discovery and development.

Ideas that could help solve this challenge area include, but are not limited to:

• Solutions that reduce diagnostic uncertainty, for example enhanced assays for PCR testing, including earlier indication of which strains of infection are more likely to become resistant
• Capabilities to support both the discovery and development of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines at pace in response to threats, such as new tools to produce molecules quickly or at scale, helping convert AI designs into products that can be tested and used
• The development of innovative modes of administration to support vaccine and therapeutic accessibility
• Embedding AI into the end-to-end pipeline for vaccine and therapeutic development to support accelerated development timelines
• R&D related to storage and deployment, such as extending shelf life or improving stability under different conditions
• Ways to detect and attribute manmade AI biological sequences developed using AI models

Proposals must address at least one challenge and move technologies through Technology Readiness Levels. Innovations must progress up to a minimum of TRL 4 and a maximum of TRL 7, progressing through at least one TRL during the project.

Challenge 3: Non-pharmaceutical Protective Systems

The government is looking to diversify and strengthen the supply chains of personal protective equipment. Proposals could include:

• Ways to increase efficiency and manufacture lower-cost PPE
• Development of universal respiratory protective equipment, including adaptations to masks that improve their fit test pass rate and could be replicated and expanded into a wider cohort
• Innovative PPE decontamination and disinfection without compromising material integrity
• Biodegradable alternatives to polypropylene for PPE production and confirmation of viability in manufacturing processes
• Solutions that remove humans from operations in contaminated areas

Proposals must address at least one challenge and move technologies through Technology Readiness Levels. Innovations must progress up to a minimum of TRL 4 and a maximum of TRL 6, progressing through at least one TRL during the project.

For all challenges, the competition is interested in concepts, products or solutions that benefit end-users working in UK defence and security. Proposals should include evidence of:

• How the project addresses a critical capability gap in the UK biological security sector
• How it will support the UK industrial sector and strengthen and secure domestic supply chains
• How it will consider future advancements and remain adaptable to a changing risk picture
• The potential for the innovation to be translated into a practical demonstration in the future
• Innovation or a creative approach
• How the proposed work applies in specific One Health, defence and security contexts

For innovations that are bioinformatic tools or software developments, it is desirable, but not essential, that they:

• Have a modular structure, with clearly defined inputs and outputs
• Have a clear specification, validation datasets and documentation to be approved by the technical partner
• Are open-source
• Are developed in a mainstream programming language to be approved by the technical partner
• Can be easily integrated into analysis pipelines running on Linux-based operating systems
• Can be command-line executed and written in a widely used programming language such as Python or C

The competition is not seeking proposals that:

• Constitute consultancy, paper-based studies or literature reviews that summarise existing literature without a view to future innovation
• Are an unsolicited resubmission of a previous UKDI or DASA bid
• Offer demonstrations of off-the-shelf products requiring no experimental development, unless applied in a novel way to the challenge
• Offer no real long-term prospect of integration into One Health, defence and security capabilities

Project duration

Up to 12 months

Award value

Grant funding request between £100,000 and £500,000

Up to £2 million excluding VAT is available in total, with five to seven proposals expected to be funded across the three challenges. Proposals are expected to be in the region of £100,000 to £500,000 each, although higher and lower values may be funded.

Funding rates

100% funded

Eligibility criteria

• Applicants must be based within the UK
• Projects do not need to be collaborative, although collaboration is encouraged
• Eligible applicants can include UK-based academia, individuals such as sole traders, SMEs and large companies
• Subcontractors must prove cyber resilience before contract award where the project is funded
• All funded project development activity must be carried out within the UK